


emotional exfoliation (and convenient ventilation)

by allapplesfall



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Angst, Cuddling & Snuggling, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Gen, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Speculatively Post-Season 05, Team as Family, charlie deserves a fucking cuddle pile so i gave her one!! sue me!!, smoking weed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-22
Updated: 2020-05-22
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:20:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24317956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allapplesfall/pseuds/allapplesfall
Summary: Behrad and Natalie have been resurrected, the Loom is broken, and the Fates are gone. Charlie retreats to her room to process. And then four other losers also retreat to her room, and somehow it isn't the worst.
Relationships: Charlie & Astra Logue, Charlie & Behrad Tomaz | Behrad Tarazi, Charlie & Zari Tomaz | Zari Tarazi
Comments: 14
Kudos: 49





	emotional exfoliation (and convenient ventilation)

**Author's Note:**

> listen, today i woke up and thought, "you know what? i fucking love charlie and she deserves a break and some weed." 3600 words later...here we are.
> 
> tw: mentions of deaths (that didn't stick), referenced abuse by charlie's shitty sisters, and they smoke pot for a hot sec (thanks, b)

The night after everything, Charlie goes to the fabrication room.

“Are you sure you’re alright?” Gideon asks.

Charlie nods. “Just the blanket and the player, thanks.”

And Gideon makes them for her—the heaviest blanket in her pattern database and a small little cassette Walkman, steel blue. Giving a small, tight smile toward the ceiling, Charlie gathers them in her arms and walks back to her quarters. Gideon, the old gem that she is, says nothing else.

In her room, she kicks aside the clutter on the floor. Dirty laundry, old bottles, a pile of magazines. Seeing them makes her feel unreasonably tired. She changed the bloody timeline how many times over, and her favorite borrowed jacket still has the balls to have that beer stain on it?

But that means her _Suck My Anarchy_ cassette has stayed on the same shelf too, half-hidden under one of Behrad’s button-ups. She grabs it, along with the earbuds tangled under a forgotten bowl, and dumps her loot on to her bed. Five minutes later, she’s curled up under the weighted blanket, album blasting in her ears.

Gilly tears up the base.

(Charlie once bought her a monkey keychain. Gilly wrapped her up in a hug so tight it almost crushed her immortal ribcage.)

Ian riffs on the guitar.

(He once took her home for shabbat and his bubbe stared into Charlie’s eyes and said something that made her eyes go misty. Ian elbowed her and told her not to be a sap and she couldn’t even glare at him.)

Declan pounds on the drums.

(He once laughed so hard his eyeliner ran and his beer shot out his nose.)

She saved them. She did. They never knew her and it’s safer that way.

_Fuck._

Images flash in front of her eyes, as much as she tries to hold them at bay. Astra, on the floor, blood pooling beneath her chest. Gary, bone dagger sprouting out of his blue button-up. Zari on the ground, John over her. Behrad, his glowing lifeline snipped like twine. Mick falling back in a roar of fire. Ian and Gilly, who never had a chance, and Declan, burned from the inside out.

She clicks the increase volume button repeatedly.

And then her sisters. Walking back into the lion’s den, even armed with the strength of her friends at her back, even with that concrete resolve setting in her chest—even knowing that she’s not the screwup, has never been the screwup, that she doesn’t have to keep running, that she gets to choose to stand up and turn around and bare her fucking teeth at the ones who have always tried to make her life hell, was the hardest thing she’s ever done. And she’s bloody proud of herself for it, she is. But now that it’s all over….

Fuck.

Thousands of years ago, when Charlie was small, Atropos used to fall backwards into puddles of their mother’s darkness to make her laugh. Lachesis sat her on her lap and dipped her hands into a pile of shorn wool, showing her how to take up the carders and brush the fibers neatly. “Look at that, Clotho,” she’d said, patient and kind. “You’re doing so well. Now do you think you can spin them stronger?”

Later, once the spinning had begun, Atropos killed her favorite dryad as a lesson that all things must end, that her name meant inevitable for a reason. Lachesis’s eyes hardened, frustrated, whenever Clotho dreamed up some new birth, some new start, that she hadn’t expressly wanted. “Always so foolish, little sister,” she’d say, “always so rash. They’ll never love you for it. Life is no gift.”

“How did they thank you for it?” Atropos had asked, in the forest the day she’d almost killed Sara and John. “By locking you in prison. We would never let anyone hurt you like that, little sister. We took care of you.”

It was manipulation, Charlie knows, it was always manipulation, never love—she owes them nothing, absolutely nothing.

And now they’re gone.

She clicks the volume button until it can’t go higher.

She gets through half of the songs before small hands tap her side, startling her. She tugs her headphones off one ear. “What?” she mumbles.

“B and I were looking for you,” says a voice. Gentle, tentative hands peel back the top of the blanket, revealing Zari, mouth parting in shock. “Oh.”

Charlie looks down at her own fingers, wrapped tight around the Walkman—child’s fingers.

“Are you, um…okay?” Zari asks. Her dark eyes flicker uncertainly. The way she speaks makes it clear she knows it’s a stupid question even as she says it. But they don’t know how to do this, don’t know anything other than banter and tension and provocative eyebrow raises, so Charlie can’t fault her for being out of her depth.

Charlie nods, trying to roll back over into her fetus position.

“You’re a _kid_.”

“Thanks, Sherlock.”

The snark has no bite, though, and Zari seems to take that as an invitation.

“Scooch,” she says.

“Zee–”

“Scooch,” she says again, in her obnoxiously loveable my-way-or-the-highway voice. She motions with her fingers. “Let me sit.” When Charlie hesitates, she adds, “Please?”

“Alright,” Charlie says, voice too soft and small. She pushes her little body up, propped against on the pillows, and shifts over to make room. Her headphones fall around her neck.

Zari toes off her shoes and climbs onto the bed. For a moment, they pause, uncertain where to go from here.

Then Zari reaches out with a well-manicured thumb and rubs Charlie’s cheek. “You’ve been crying.”

Charlie raises a hand to her other cheek. Her fingers come away wet. “Yeah.”

“Come here,” Zari says, reaching out and wrapping her arm around Charlie’s shoulders. “You could’ve told us you were…having a bad night.”

Automatically, Charlie leans into the touch, curls into Zari’s warmth. She feels so small, so goddamn bloody small, and she shouldn’t need this comfort, she shouldn’t. They _won_ , they _did it_. But she feels so _small_. Her chest hurts so bad. And the solidness of Zari’s side, the familiarity of her thousand-dollar silk blouse, makes the vision of her on the floor, zombie teeth tearing a chunk of her shoulder off, seem less real.

“Shh,” Zari murmurs. She brushes her hand back and forth along Charlie’s arm. “Charlie…”

Charlie shakes her head. She can’t talk about anything yet.

Zari sighs, rolls her lips together like she’s evening out her lipstick. “Yeah, okay.”

She smells nice, like coconut shampoo. She’s so warm. Charlie closes her eyes and lets herself be held.

Some amount of time later, the door slides open. “Charlie, I–” The voice stops abruptly.

Blinking back the sudden light, Charlie makes out a tall figure silhouetted in the doorway. Long, curly hair, high heels, a loud blazer that emphasizes her shoulders. Face screwed up in confusion, entirely unsure how to deal with the sight in front of her. Astra.

Zari stiffens. “Does no one on this ship _knock_?”

“I…”

“Look,” Zari says. She shifts her shoulders. “If you’re here to have some of your little argumentative foreplay, don’t.”

“I wasn’t.”

“Well…good.”

“Can I…” Astra struggles to find the words. “Can I come in?”

Zari pauses. After a beat, she looks down at Charlie, seemingly having assigned herself her doorman. “Are you okay with that?”

Charlie shrugs. “Yeah.”

The door slides closed, leaving them in dim lighting. Astra bends down to take off her heels, setting them in front of the door. She stares uncertainly at the bed.

“Oh, come sit down,” says Zari, almost exasperated.

Astra daintily steps over the debris. She picks her way around the other side of the bed, hesitating one more time before settling down on Charlie’s other side. “Bit rich,” she says to Zari, gaining back some of her usual edge, “for you to judge someone on their ‘argumentative foreplay,’ don’t you think?’”

Zari scoffs.

“No fighting,” Charlie mumbles. “Not till I can join in.”

“Are you…” Astra looks down at her. “What’s going on?”

Charlie doesn’t even know how to start.

“We’re having a slumber party,” Zari says, when the quiet stretches. “Best way to decompress after you save the world, actually. It’s like emotional exfoliation.”

“A _slumber party?”_ Astra overenunciates with distaste.

“Yeah, a slumber party. You cuddle, and stuff.”

“ _Cuddle?_ ”

“Yeah,” says Zari, word harder this time. Charlie can feel herself being motioned to.

“Fine,” says Astra, after a pause. “I can…cuddle.”

She scoots over, laying her long legs down the length of the bed. “Ow,” she mutters, pulling the walkman out from under her thigh. She unplugs the headphone cord and sets it on the floor. Repositioning, she gets close enough that her side presses up against Charlie’s back. She rests a hand there, beneath Zari’s.

She smells slightly sharp, burnt.

They sit in silence for a few minutes. Having them there…Charlie has to admit, it’s not the worst.

“Shouldn’t you be with your mom?” Zari asks quietly. Her tenseness has drained away, and the question isn’t pointed.

“She’s asleep. I thought…” Astra sighs. She taps her hand against Charlie’s skin. “I owed you a thank you. For what you did.”

“S’nothing,” Charlie says.

“It’s not nothing.” Zari’s voice is deadly serious. “Charlie, you brought us back from the literal dead. You brought her mom back, brought _Behrad_ back.”

“You stood up to your sisters. Believe me, I know what that must have taken.”

Charlie bites her lip, and not in the usual way she does around hot girls. She nods.

“From where I’m sitting, you’re…the strongest person I know. If after all that, you need, what, a hug? We’re here.”

Astra makes a small _mm-hmm_ noise. “She’s right.”

Warmth washes over Charlie’s body. She feels her limbs extend, her chest swell. Back in her adult form, she rolls slightly, onto her back. Pressing her lips closed, she lifts her head to look from one of them to the other. “Thanks, you two.”

“Duh,” says Zari.

Astra, who got pushed a few inches to the left by the shapeshift, smirks. “You do make one cute kid.”

Charlie shoves her lightly.

She tenses, about to push back on instinct, until she sees the almost-smile on Charlie’s face. She grins.

With some minor rearranging, they end against the heavily pillowed headboard, leaning on each other. Astra peels off her blazer, exposing the tank top underneath. Charlie tries to soak in as much of their touch as she can.

“Your room really is a disaster,” Zari says eventually. Her tone comes off more commenting for the sake of it than judgmental. “Have you ever used a washing machine?”

Charlie’s lips twitch. “Have you?”

Zari rolls her eyes. “Maman would never have let me get away with not washing my own clothes. Not while I lived with her, at least.”

“And since?”

“Mm. Let’s just say I have a lot of dry-clean only pieces.”

“That was the benefit of Hell,” Astra says. “No… _laundry_.”

Charlie snorts.

A square of light flares in the darkness, accompanied by a chime. Zari’s phone. The woman picks it up, flicks through some messages. “Behrad,” she says. “He wants to know if I found you.”

“Think you did,” Charlie observes.

“Can he come? If not, that’s okay–”

Charlie leans her head on her shoulder. “B’s one of my best mates. ‘Course he can come.”

“Sweet.” Zari’s fingers fly across the keyboard. With a _whoosh_ , the message sends.

“So…” Astra looks over the top of Charlie’s head at Zari. “What else do you do at a ‘slumber party’?”

“Oh, um…nails, gossip, braiding hair…”

Charlie looks up at her, incredulous. “You’re taking the piss.”

“Look, I don’t know, okay?” The glow from her phone screen gleams white against Zari’s face. “I’ve seen plenty of movies where girls have sleepovers, but….”

“You never had any,” Astra surmises.

“No. My mom never let me before I met Mithra, and after that…I was everybody’s friend, but not the kind you invite over.”

Charlie pats her thigh. “Then this is your lucky day.”

At the door, someone knocks out a bum-bada-bum-bum rhythm.

“Yeah?” Charlie calls out. Her voice is still rough in ways she doesn’t necessarily love.

“It’s me,” Behrad calls back.

“Good.” Zari glances at Astra. “If he hadn’t knocked, I would’ve told Maman on him.”

Astra smirks.

Charlie ignores them. “Get on in here, B.”

The door slides open. Behrad appears, sheepish and awkward and wearing a wonderfully loud Hawaiian shirt. Charlie’s heart catches. She’d missed him so fucking much.

“Hey, guys,” he says, stepping in. He blinks when he sees Astra. “Oh, uh, hey.”

The door slides shut behind him.

“We’re having a slumber party,” Zari explains. “Come sit.” She pats the foot of the bed on her side.

Obediently, Behrad joins them on the bed. He looks to Charlie. “You hanging in there?”

Sitting up, she makes eye contact with him. “Yeah,” she says. “Yeah, I’m gettin’ through. You’re a sight for sore eyes though.”

He opens his arms. She leans in and they grip each other in a tight hug.

“I missed you,” Charlie murmurs into his curls. “I was so bloody scared you wouldn’t come back.”

“You brought me back,” he says. “Thank you.”

A beat passes. Then two.

She nods and pulls away, knuckling a stray tear.

“So.” Behrad looks at his sister. “A slumber party, huh?”

Her eyes dare him to comment.

He grins. “You read her the Prince of Timbuktu yet?”

“Please, Satan,” Astra says, tilting her head at the ceiling. “I may be surviving cuddling, but I _absolutely_ draw the line at bedtime stories.”

Charlie laughs and rests more of her weight on her. “You sure?”

“Very.”

“I do have something else to offer.” Behrad pulls a small box out of his pocket. “I rolled these before I left.”

“Oh, B,” Charlie says, “you _are_ a legend.”

“What are those?” Astra asks, peering closer.

“It’s a joint, Astra.” Charlie mimes smoking it. “Skunk? Pot? Weed?”

“Ah.”

“This is a no pressure zone,” Behrad assures her. “Chill if you wanna try, chill if you don’t.”

“And I’ll ventilate,” Gideon announces.

Charlie smiles up at the ceiling. “Aw, Gideon, you’re a real one.”

“I’m glad you’re feeling better, Charlie.”

Plucking a joint from the offered tin, Charlie winks. “And I’m about to feel _loads_ better.”

Behrad lights her up, and she takes a good-sized puff. Holding the smoke in her lungs, she offers the joint to Zari, who considers for a moment.

“Just this once,” she decides. She takes small, delicate inhales, and passes it to her brother.

To Charlie, Behrad mouths, _not her first time._ Zari kicks him.

After Behrad has some, he passes it to Astra, who takes it with awkward fingers. “How do I…”

“I’ll relight it for you,” he says, and shows her how to take a hit.

She tries, and ends up coughing herself red.

“Smaller breaths,” he advises. “You’ll get it.”

Astra glares at Charlie, who’s grinning crookedly. Charlie steals the joint from her, unrepentant.

They pass it around one more time before Behrad decides they should take a break for the sake of their less experienced participants. Charlie doesn’t care. She can already feel her muscles start to relax, the jagged hole in her chest sanding over at the sides. The company doesn’t hurt. Behrad makes some silly joke, Astra makes a cutting rebuttal, and Zari huffs. Charlie grins, absolutely smitten with the concept of them all.

She doesn’t know how much time has passed before a voice at the door calls, “Charlie?”

“The hell is this? Did I accidentally put my room where the bathroom used to be?”

“You love us,” Zari disagrees. She snuggles closer into Charlie’s side, the weed making her even touchier than normal.

“Do I?” she jokes. In a louder voice, she says, “Come in!”

Gideon pulls the door open to reveal Sara, dressed in her grey sleep sweats. Her nose crinkles beneath her sunglasses. “Okay,” she says. “I might not be able to see what you’re doing, but I definitely want in.”

“Boss!” Charlie cheers, at the same time as Zari grins, “Sara!”

Sara cocks her head. “How many of you are here?”

“Me, B, Z, and Astra.”

“We’re having a slumber party,” Astra explains, deadpan.

Sara grins, shaking her head. “Will I wreck the vibe?”

“No way,” Behrad says easily, before he pauses, realizing its not his to invite people to. He looks at Charlie.

“’Course you’re in,” Charlie says. “Watch yourself on the floor, though.”

“She lives in a pigsty,” Zari agrees.

Carefully, Sara shuffles over, feet never leaving the ground. As of halfway, she drags a spare hoodie along with her.

“Hey,” B says. “Is that mine?”

Charlie shakes her head. “Nope.”

“It is! I like that hoodie, I thought I lost it after Beebo.”

“Beebo?” Zari and Astra ask in unison. They make faces at each other.

“Don’t ask,” Sara says, patting her way across the mattress.

Behrad catches her hand and guides her over to Astra’s side. She pauses at the contact, stilling in the way Charlie’s learned means she’s seeing something, and then clambers up onto the bed.

“You see anything?” Charlie asks.

Sara grins. “Yeah. I’m about to get _lit_.”

They laugh. Sara’s left hand, after some patting, finds Charlie’s leg. She rests it there.

Charlie smiles, even though she know Sara can’t see her. This bloody team of bloody saps.

Twenty minutes later, even Astra’s loosened back up after the captain’s entrance. None of them are exactly sober, but they’re not caked, either. It’s just…comfy.

Until someone else bangs on the door.

“Okay,” Zari whispers. “That’s crazy.”

“The more the merrier,” Charlie says, though in all honesty she’s getting tired. “Open ‘er up, Gideon.”

This time, the visitor is John. He stares at the bed like it’s a pit of live vipers.

“John-o,” Charlie says, giving him a lazy wave.

“Right,” John says. “I came to check in on you, and I’ve done that, and now I’m…gonna go.”

“Awwww,” Sara says.

“Good seeing you, love,” he says to Charlie, and beats a hasty retreat.

The moment the door closes, Sara holds up a finger. “Scale of one to ten, how terrified did he look.”

Astra raises her eyebrows. “I’ve seen a man about to get his penis eaten by a hellhound look less scared than that.”

Charlie cracks up, John’s wide eyes clear in her mind.

Eventually, the stress of the day takes its toll. Sara nods off first, curled protectively around Charlie’s foot, and because of the sunglasses it takes ten minutes for anybody to notice. Once they do, Behrad gently pulls them off her face, passing them to Zari for her to set on the bedside table. He’s out next—coming back from the dead is a tiring business, after all. He leans back into his sister’s lap, and the gentle stroking of her fingers knocks him right out. She’s next. After pushing him off of her, she sinks down beside him, “just to get comfy.” Minutes later, her breaths even out.

Charlie turns to Astra, the last one left awake. “Can you believe this lot?” she whispers.

Astra smiles, looking at all the sleeping forms. “Utterly predicatble,” she drawls.

“Thanks.” Charlie glances down. “Y’know, for popping by. I know it was just because you all felt like you owed me, but…”

“Do you not get it yet, seriously? How much they care about you?”

Charlie fiddles with the cord of her earbuds.

“These losers love you so fucking much. It’s honestly? Nauseating.” Astra sighs. “Look, I don’t know what’s going on in your head right now. I’m sure it’s not exactly…fun. But you matter so much to these people.”

Charlie looks at her out of the corner of her eye. “And to you?”

Astra stares at her. “You– Antichrist, look at my slacks.”

“What?”

“What do my slacks look like right now, you idiot?”

Charlie tries to make them out in the gloom. “They’re…I dunno. Wrinkled?”

“And my blazer?”

Charlie peers over the edge of the bed. “Wrinkled?”

“Gold star to the shapeshifter in the dunce cap.”

Understanding hits Charlie like a splash of water to the face. “Aw,” she teases. “Astra Logue cares about me.”

“Shut up.” Astra pushes herself down to a supine position. “You’re insufferable.”

Charlie grins. “Yeah?”

Astra tries to hide her smile in the dark. “Goodnight, punk.”

“Night.”

And then everyone’s asleep, crammed together like a jigsaw puzzle, except Charlie. She watches their chests rise and fall. Behrad, whose breaths whistle sometimes when he exhales. Sara, her hair tangled over the mounds of blanket. Zari, who finally gets to stop performing when she sleeps. And Astra, the Clotho that wasn’t, resting easily knowing her mother’s alive. For a moment—a long moment—Charlie had lost them. Her sisters had taken them from her, from the world.

But she’d gotten them back. When the chips were down, she’d fucking sprinted through an apocalyptic bar eight miles out of London, right into her sisters’ outstretched hands, and she’d fucked them over so hard that they’ll never mess with her mates again. Never mess with _Charlie_ again. The legends are safe, tucked into Charlie’s bed like a bunch of Darwin Award collectors’ edition action figures, and the Fates are gone.

So if part of her still feels hollow, still feels lonely, still feels doubtful, still has to mourn the Atropos who made her laugh and the Lachesis who taught her to card wool, then fine. Who bloody cares.

Charlie looks at her sleeping friends, chest tight with something someone schmaltzy might call love.

Yeah, she thinks again. Who bloody cares.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for sticking with this mushy dialogue trip, guys! let me know what you think <33


End file.
